Body of Boston Strangler Suspect to Be Exhumed

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BOSTON — Massachusetts authorities say they’ll exhume the body of Albert DeSalvo, long suspected of being the Boston Strangler, for DNA testing, after samples from a relative were linked to evidence from the final Strangler slaying.

DeSalvo confessed to some of the killings of 13 women in the ’60s but was never charged.

Police and prosecutors said they believe DNA from DeSalvo’s remains will confirm that he was to blame at least for the 1964 killing of 19-year-old Mary Sullivan. She was the last of 13 women who were raped and strangled over a nearly two-year period.

DeSalvo confessed to some of the killings, including Sullivan’s, but was never charged with them. He was sent to prison for unrelated rapes and was stabbed to death there in 1973.

No physical evidence available at the time connected DeSalvo to the crimes, and critics said some of the details DeSalvo provided to police were from news reports or police. But former prosecutor Julian Soshnick told CNN in 2002 that DeSalvo “knew things that were not in the public domain.”